Mental Libraries: The Reception of the Arts of Memory in Literature and Culture

by Julia Domínguez (Editor)

Overview

Mental Libraries: The Reception of the Arts of Memory in Literature and Culture explores the enduring legacy of mnemonic systems across literature, visual arts, pedagogy, and cultural production.

Centered on the metaphor of the “mental library,” this collection reveals how memory practices functioned as tools for knowledge storage as well as generative frameworks for creativity and invention. The 13 essays trace the reception, adaptation, and transformation of the ars memoriae from late medieval Europe to early modern Spain, Italy, France, and Latin America. Contributors examine canonical figures like Petrarch, Bruno, and Burton, alongside lesser‑explored thinkers such as Bartolomeo da Mantova, Zorrilla, and Carrara. With insights from renowned scholars such as Lina Bolzoni and Luis Merino Jerez, this volume offers fresh perspectives on the cultural and intellectual impact of mnemonic systems.

Rich in visual content and interdisciplinary analysis, Mental Libraries bridges past and present, inviting readers to rethink the role of memory in shaping knowledge, literature, and culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032852294
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/12/2025
Series:	Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Julia Domínguez is a Professor of Spanish and the Director of the Latin American and Iberian Studies Program at the University of Delaware, where she also serves as a fellow in the ACHIEVE Program. She is the co-editor of the book series The Early Modern Exchange for the University of Delaware Press. Her work explores the intersections of literature, history, and memory, with a focus on the arts of memory, the history of science, and their impact on early modern culture. She is the author of Quixotic Memories: Cervantes and Memory in Early Modern Spain (2022), the editor of Cervantes in Perspective (2012), and the co‑editor of Hispanic Studies in Honor of Robert L. Fiore (2009). Her recent scholarship examines how mnemonic systems shaped literary and visual culture in early modern Spain and Latin America.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors; Foreword: The Art of Memory and a New Season of Studies; Introduction: Mental Libraries. The Reception of the Arts of Memory in Literature and Culture; PART I: Crafting the Mental Library: Memory Systems and their Cultural Contexts; 1. The Use of Major and Minor Loci in the Liber Memoriae Artificialis by Bartolomeo da Mantova (1429); 2. The Enchantment of Memory: Observations on Giordano Bruno’s Cantus Circaeus; 3. Pedagogy of Memory: Albertus Carrara’s De Omnibus Ingeniis Augendae Memoriae; 4. “Traduttore, traditore”? How Early Mnemonic Knowledge Is Shaped by Translations; 5. The Body as a Mnemonic Aid for Learning Grammar; 6. Diagrammatizing the Art of Memory: Two Examples of Tree Diagrams in Mnemonic Treatises from the 15^th Century; PART II: Reimagining the Mental Library: Cultural and Literary Transformations of Memory; 7. Encyclopedic Mnemonics in Diego Valadés’ Rhetorica Christiana; 8. The Machiavellian Movement: Acquiring Virtues through the Body; 9. Burton’s Mental Library: The Anatomy of Melancholy and the Art of Memory; 10. Mnemotechnics, Vision, and Apocrypha. Sources of imagines agentes in Middle English Drama; 11. Memory in De sacris concionibus recte formandis (Rome, 1543) by Alfonso Zorrilla; 12. The Geography of Memory and Hispanic Poets of the Golden Age; 13. Local Memory and Literary Landscape in Petrarch; Index

Editorial Reviews

“Mental Libraries: The Reception of the Arts of Memory in Literature and Culture offers a rich sampling of essays on how early modern knowledge actively structured and accessed mnemonic practices and cultural production, while at the same time stressing that “memory” is not a relic of the past but a driving force in the continuum of human creativity, knowledge production, and cultural expression that continues to inform how we think, imagine, and create across time and space.”

 

—William E. Engel (Nick B. Williams Professor Literature), Sewanee: The University of the South

From the Publisher